By You could write The Great American Blog Post (or Australian, or German, or Vietnamese…), but if design and layout issues make it difficult to read, it’s not going to get read. A busy background, oddly-placed photos, and colored text can all get between your message and the reader, but one of the biggest readability culprits is white space — or lack thereof.
Let us illustrate. This part may be a little painful, but bear with me:
You could write The Great American Blog Post (or Australian, or German, or Vietnamese…), but if design and layout issues make it difficult to read, it’s not going to get read. A busy background, oddly-placed photos, and colored text can all get between your message and the reader, but one of the biggest readability culprits is white space — or lack thereof. Whether on a printed page or on screen, it’s challenging to read long, continuous blocks of text. Our eyes can only scan so many lines before we start to lose our place in the text; were we seven lines in, or eight? When this happens, we have to backtrack to re-orient ourselves, taking us out of the reading flow. Not only do the words start to run together, but ideas muddy as well — it becomes difficult for readers to parse the threads of your story or argument when there’s no visual distinction between each point. (Remember the five-paragraph essay format you learned in elementary school? There’s a reason we still teach it! Not only does it force you to clarify your own thinking, it creates a flowing argument that’s easy for readers to follow.) If your goal is a stream-of-consciousness piece that makes the reader feel uneasy, long paragraphs might be an interesting stylistic choice. If your goal is a readable, easily followed post, embrace the white space. You might be surprised at how few lines it actually takes before your eye starts getting confused. Depending on how many different ideas your post introduces or how complex your story is, even five or six lines can be too many. Eight is pushing it, and by the time you’ve hit ten or eleven, lots of readers have given up, despite your sparkling prose and rapier wit. (And sometimes, a single, stand-alone line makes a bigger splash than the world’s most finely-crafted sentence.) If you find yourself defaulting to long paragraphs, take a critical look at what you’ve written. Whenever you find yourself introducing a new element, hit enter; it may not result in a perfectly spaced piece, but it’ll be a good start. You’ll end up with something that’s easier for readers to get lost in — in a good way! — and it may even help you think through your post more effectively.
See what I mean? That was 28 lines, and I wasn’t even comfortable writing it — I felt myself coming unmoored from the post, and having to constantly re-read to figure out what I’d said and where I’d wanted to go next. I’m sorry I made you read it.
Let’s try that again:
You could write The Great American Blog Post (or Australian, or German, or Vietnamese…), but if design and layout issues make it difficult to read, it’s not going to get read. A busy background, oddly-placed photos, and colored text can all get between your message and the reader, but one of the biggest readability culprits is white space — or lack thereof.
Whether on a printed page or on screen, it’s challenging to read long, continuous blocks of text. Our eyes can only scan so many lines before we start to lose our place in the text; were we seven lines in, or eight? When this happens, we have to backtrack to re-orient ourselves, taking us out of the reading flow.
Not only do the words start to run together, but ideas muddy as well — it becomes difficult for readers to parse the threads of your story or argument when there’s no visual distinction between each point. (Remember the five-paragraph essay format you learned in elementary school? There’s a reason we still teach it! Not only does it force you to clarify your own thinking, it creates a flowing argument that’s easy for readers to follow.) If your goal is a stream-of-consciousness piece that makes the reader feel uneasy, long paragraphs might be an interesting stylistic choice. If your goal is a readable, easily followed post, embrace the white space.
You might be surprised at how few lines it actually takes before your eye starts getting confused. Depending on how many different ideas your post introduces or how complex your story is, even five or six lines can be too many. Eight is pushing it, and by the time you’ve hit ten or eleven, lots of readers have given up, despite your sparkling prose and rapier wit.
(And sometimes, a single, stand-alone line makes a bigger splash than the world’s most finely-crafted sentence.)
If you find yourself defaulting to long paragraphs, take a critical look at what you’ve written. Whenever you find yourself introducing a new element, hit enter; it may not result in a perfectly spaced piece, but it’ll be a good start. You’ll end up with something that’s easier for readers to get lost in — in a good way! — and it may even help you think through your post more effectively.
See?
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The Daily Post 
Cutting the post down into smaller increments or paragraphs separated by whitespace has more eye appeal, but also makes sense in the overall literal presentation of a subject.
A final summarized line or thought to end with would be like adding a maraschino cherry to the topping, or frosted cake. 🙂
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Great advise. It’s almost like a person that just keeps talking without taking a break. You just want to excuse yourself or simply walk away.
So here’s to you!
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Yes! Writing on a blog is more like journalism (short paragraphs) than the typical essays students are taught to write in school. (I would know–I teach college and I teach blogging!)
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In the world of web writing, I think shorter is always better. Short paragraphs. Short sentences. Shorter words. The web has made it us all so ADD. I recently wrote about this topic in an article WordPress was kind enough to Freshly Press. http://101books.net/2013/04/04/what-hemingway-can-teach-you-about-web-writing/
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Thank you so much! As a means of critical thinking, I looked at my post from yesterday. What I thought was short and punchy turned out to be two blocks of twelve lines each. There may be self gratification in rambling, but brevity tends to win the day.
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Huzzah! Depending on your theme and layout, a post can end up taking up many more lines on your blog than in the post editing window — it’s always good to double check.
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I’d like to emphasize that long posts can make for an enjoyable read as well if, as you say, appropriate white space is given for the Reader to encapsulate the Author’s thought. Also, those thoughts should be simplified, but also interesting enough to keep the Reader going.
Interesting topic that you chose as well, attracts more Readers like Current Events, Recipes, intriguing Web Sites etc… Yet sometimes the odd Rant, poem, or even more especially, blogging on the humorous side can be health too. All I can seem to come up with is::” It depends.” LOL!
True enough! We are not just learning what to blog, but how to blog it… There. That was a blog right there! If I could say any one thing though, it would have to be that it’s negative emotions we have to avoid triggering. I look forward to what you have in store for tomorrow. That’s positive. YACK, YACK, YACK , AND ON AND ON AND ON! :O)
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I love a long post, if well-written an organized. In fact, we encourage people who write longer-form posts to tag them with “WPlongform” so other fans of more in-depth reading can find them easily. (For more on that, take a look at: https://wordpress.com/blog/2013/03/20/longform-writing/ )
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Oh how I wish I’d found this a while back – when teaching English in secondary school, and having science or other study reporst and essays submitted all in one block of runon text. I’ve shared this to the Rotorua Writers group on facebook, it’s so “nice” (as in ‘precise’)
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This is so true! Some blogs make it feel like the main text and all the extras are fighting each other for attention. What do you all feel about one sentence per line? I’ve seen a few blogs like that, and am not sure about it.
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It depends on the content. Generally, I tend to find posts that are entirely single-line harder to read as well — sometimes, you WANT thoughts to be visually linked. That being said, a well-placed single line can have a lot of punch.
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A few weeks ago the daily post was on backgrounds. So I went in and tried a few. None of them looked good — too busy!
I tried black for a few days (it was white behind the text, but the sides were black.) It looked okay for awhile, but I ultimately went back and made the whole thing white, just because I liked the clean, spare look of it. Thanks for affirming my choice! 🙂
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Wow I teach this at work I feel vindicated great example and my eyes did go crossed
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Essential! Essential!
My father is a Communications professor and this was one of his biggest issues with the reports he had to read and grade!
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Great tip ! But I must say I already do that, i really helps both me and my readers 🙂
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Excellent! Keep up the good white space 🙂
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I agree the second version of your post is much easier to read, but I do worry about making paragraph breaks where they don’t grammatically belong just because it looks better on a screen.
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The content is always the driver, so I agree, breaks need to make sense with the grammar and overall goals of the piece. It’s more about separating ideas an giving them breathing room than about simply breaking up text.
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Oh so right, short paragraphs are so much easier to read. I gave up on the first section.
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So true. Even with my 75 word stories i usually have 2 or 3 paragraphs!
Interesting post, thanks.
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Very useful post. Thank you!
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This post prompted me to take a look at my ancient archives and not to toot my own horn too much (well maybe a little) my form and content have certainly improved. Practice makes…well…not perfect, but certainly better.
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I am new to blogging; although, not new to writing! I have always wondered about wordy paragraphs. Now I see the Light! Thank you for making it so crystal clear!
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My pleasure!
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I try to do those very things. When I get tired of a blog template, I try to find one that isn’t so busy. Then again, I like to have one that represents ME! Good post, thanks for the advice.
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Reblogged this on On My Front Porch and commented:
Another excellent blogging tip from WordPress
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Yup, I was choking, gasping for air on the 2nd paragraph myself….so….:D
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I know this web page gives quality dependent content and additional information, is there any other site which gives such data in quality?
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I have tried to keep my blog post about 2-3 paragraphs for the most part unless it is a special post like an article, poems or short stories. I have been adding more breaks to my paragraphs when I switch ideas or directions. Thank you for sharing!
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Great Advice. After a long trying day, I came home, read this post and completely stripped down my blog to the barest of bare. I chose a new style/layout, cut down on my widgets, and launched it the next morning. Here is what it is now: http://waldina.com/2013/05/09/waldina-has-a-new-look-blatant-self-promotion/ Thanks for the push in the right direction!!!
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